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Monday, 4 March 2013

Sherman vs Tiger

I have talked at some length about how Soviet guns were perfectly capable of dealing with German armour, so let's talk about the Americans for a bit. In popular history, the Tiger effortlessly cleaves through dozens of Sherman tanks at a time. Let's see what happens when the Sherman's gun is pitted against the Tiger's armour in a more rigorous test than hearsay and memoirs.

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This test was performed firing a 75 mm M3 gun from an M4A2 Sherman with M-61 and M-72 rounds. Here are the results:

The photo for this particular test is missing, but here's the Tiger after the other tests.

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As you can see, the Allies' guns in general, and the Sherman's gun in particular, were very capable of dealing with the Tiger in 1943. The more observant of you will notice that the turret is no longer on top of the turret ring. This was a common side effect for German tanks that were being shot at by Soviet 122 mm and 152 mm caliber guns.

Not too much doubt that th gun could pen the armor. The problem faced was that the Sherman had to get that close to penetrate, while the Tiger could get a catastrophic kill at a thousand and pen at 2k.

so what your telling me is they took a tiger just out the factory with no need for any repairs to anything on the tiger and they did ONE test with one shot on each side of the tiger and these are the results?

You can pretty much rig results in your favor but when it came to actual combat, the Tiger totally destroyed the Sherman. Having listened to many eye witness reports from US and British tankers talking, they wanted nothing to do with the Tiger. As one US commander put it, "we needed 5 Shermans to knock ! Tiger out". Most of the crews of the Shermans were not given the better armor piercing shells as they were sent to the tank destroyer units.

The 5 Shermans to knock out one Tiger is a half-truth. It took five because shermans worked in groups of 5, whereas Tigers were usually solo or duo. The Panzer Lehr had 6 functional Tiger II tanks in Normandy, and no Tiger Is. The 503rd Heavy Panzer Abt. had 24 Tigers, mostly Tiger IIs. Most Tigers were sent to the eastern front, and the panzer armies in Normandy were about 2:1:1 ratio Panzer IV, Panzer V, and SPGs (varying between StuG IIIs and JgPzr IVs) On top of that, there were only two combat instances of US vs. Tiger tanks. The first time, the M26 Pershing lost, the second time, the Shermans won. (there was a third time, but the tigers were being loaded onto rail cars, so it wasn't really a fair fight ;))

You are correct about Shermans not getting very many of the HVAP rounds. They were highly prized by tankers, and most went to the TD Bns. This is mostly due to the standing order for all US tanks to immediately withdraw if they encounter enemy armor, which proved to be the best tactic. In every stat available, the defending tanks had the advantage and scored more kills than the attacker every time, including Panther tanks vs. any allied tanks.

"(there was a third time, but the tigers were being loaded onto rail cars, so it wasn't really a fair fight ;))"

There was a fourth time: a T26E3 knocked out a Tiger with two shots at 900 yards, the first of which (T30E16) sheared off a final drive and the second of which (T33) penetrated the gun shield and entered the turret.

Is this website run by Russian patriots dedicated to proving the allied machines, infantry, tactics etc. were superior to those of the Germans? Sorry if I have inferred incorrectly, but I have read many articles here which are about the inferiority of German soldiers, German armor, the unreliability of German records etc. etc. Sometimes the only sources are original Russian records too, which strikes me as quite odd considering the dubious validity attributed to Russian records by most professional historians.

Why would it be interesting? I said it looked to be run by Russians about the Allies, not an unreasonable assumption considering your name, sources and the majority of articles.I'm certain you would know of the criticisms of Soviet history, such as revisionism, and furthermore you would have come across specific examples of such, from Yezhov's picture to the Katyn Massacre. But since you asked, you would probably know of Antony Beevor.

It's funny how people can complain about foreign propaganda while they take their own as a total true.

Anonymus who writted in December 10, I'll tell you a secret, Abrams can be killed with another non Abrams tank. To peform this action you don't need a saboted osmium alloy unicorn horn, fired from a 460mm L127 wootz steel cannon with an atomic bomb as a propellant, you can kill it not only with a tank but also with a man portable launcher.

Great stuff. Really surprised that they had and tested M72 rounds. I believe the US declared those rounds limited standard in 1942 (I wish all these documents were dated). The results are absolutely consistent with American ballistic/performance tests at about 0 degrees. The key being "at zero degrees obliquity"...

Something tells me you have read neither this article nor any of the others. Effective shots at even two kilometers with any 8,8 cm gun (including the King Tiger's gun) represented a whopping half a percent of the total. http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2013/08/combat-performance-of-75-cm-and-88-cm.html

Being able to knock out anything at 3km isn't much help when the average combat ranges in Western Europe were 600m or less!. It's also worth noting that when the German tanks were on the offensive, their losses rates went up proportionally.

IIRC, the 75mm Shermans were all that common until right at the end of the war. Problems with the ammo, logistics and retraining slowed their adoption. So, while the test are likely valid, they probably didn't translate strongly into the battlefield.

It's also important to note that American doctrine called for an "organic" attack on major systems like the Tiger tank. An organic attack means attacking the system over entire life cycle form raw materials, to design, to manufacturing, crew training and moral, deployment, supply, repair etc. as well as spoofing intellegence and even targeting. In a very real way, having to put a round through a tank to kill it represented an overall failure of the doctrine and in any case aircraft were more cost effective at tank killing than other tanks.

The strategy was successful. German tanks were fragile from material shortages and manufacturing defects from interruptions from bombings. Fuel shortages took out more tanks than weapons.

American statisticial managers quickly determined that trying to field sufficient numbers of large, heavy gunned tanks would be to slow while at the same time, the long logistics train and available manpower meant no soviet style tactics either. Instead, they just whittled the german tank force (and all other forces) organically at every single point they could strike.

Excellent stuff. Its good to see this revisionism gaining traction. I've often wondering if German equipment and personnel were so outstanding how did the allies beat them; and certainly in the west with lower casualties than the Wermacht. I think they 4 or 5 to one myth came from a worst case planning estimate by the brass hats - which many have demonstrated was never got anywhere near in reality.

The 4-5 Shermans to 1 enemy tank came from US tactical doctrine. The smallest tank unit you sent to engage an enemy is a platoon - consisting of 5 tanks! So even if its just an enemy halftrack, they still sent out a platoon.

Excellent stuff. Its good to see this revisionism gaining traction. I've often wondering if German equipment and personnel were so outstanding how did the allies beat them; and certainly in the west with lower casualties than the Wermacht. I think they 4 or 5 to one myth came from a worst case planning estimate by the brass hats - which many have demonstrated was never got anywhere near in reality.

allies beat the germans because of numbersif the germans had as many tigers and et cetera with the kind of numbers that the allies had or if hitler hadn't tried to command the military personally we'd be speaking german right now

Ah the old wehraboo myth (put it in google if you don't know what it is) of a magnificently trained and equipped army overcome by rabble hordes. Tigers cleaving through masses of Shermans and T34s before being finally overwhelmed. Its not true. Certainly final victory was certain because of the allies's greater resources but they understood far better the old adage of amateurs talk tactics experts talk logistics. The Germans were busily designing Tiger tanks whilst still supplying their armies by horse and cart. As for the 5 to 1 Sherman to Tiger myth its long since been knocked out (look up Chieftain's Hatch)

Also another fun fact on WW2 history, M4 Shermans only encountered Tigers 3 times during the war. One instance was the Battle of the Bulge, another was when Tigers were loaded and/or being loaded onto rail road cars so the Americans had the advantage and the third one im not so sure on. You may think this is made up and fake, well, tankers in WW2 when they thought they seen a Tiger they were actually looking a Panzerkampfwagen IV, since the Panzerkampfwagen IV and VI have the boxy structure and roughly the same profile and the fact they were far away from the tank they couldn't distinguish if it was Pz.Kmf. IV or a Tiger, and no tanker when confronting a tank is gonna sit and say well the tiger has this and that but this tank doesn't, they are going to make a quick guess and kill it.

is this supposed to prove something? I don't doubt that people think that a Sherman with improved ammunition can probably penetrate the side of a tiger's turret from 600 meters..and apparently what actually happened in a war is 'hearsay and memoirs' while a test in a controlled environment is a better study of what would actually happen in a battle? I don't mean to hate but I don't think that the soviet's method of just getting battles down to the numbers was the best way of doing it. if you want to say that the tiger didn't kill a lot of Shermans, that's not really true either. Top two reasons that tigers died were artillery and airstrikes, and I doubt that the third one was not mechanical..

You really need to get out more old lad: refer to previous. Some facts - as I say look up http://ftr.wot-news.com/2013/07/28/please-dont-use-the-5-m4s-1-panther-myth/The majority of Shermans were killed by AT guns not other tanks.Only about 20% of a Tank's time is spent fighting other tanks - the rest is supporting infantry (so a great advantage to your infantry if you've got lots of tanks)Artillery doesn't really knock tanks out its HE not AP, nor does airstrikes (too inaccurate) they both do knock out the tank's supplies (logistics again) and supporting infantry.

I'm sure main Tiger killer wasn't the IS2, German retired their loved and idestructible (as their manual shamesly teached to any new operator) kitties when they detected that beast in the same front sector. If in the occidental front they feared kitties, what would it happen if they had to fight what kitties feared?

"more rigorous test than hearsay and memoirs"What you are saying is "Yes, I will totally discount all memoirs of veterans, I mean who cares what they think?" I prefer to believe first hand accounts of S.V. Radley-Walters (google him), who visited the Cdn armour school and the regiments quite readily. Your sentence completely disrespects General Rad and all veterans many of us who have spoken to in the past as part of our our military experience.

Thanks, I know who Radley-Walters is. I have the utmost respect for veterans, but memory is a very fragile thing, especially in a dangerous combat situation where a participant can't exactly calmly reflect on what's going on and might have a very limited view of the situation.

My grandfather faught all over the Pacific and swore by the M1 ping myth.

I actually purchased an M1 rifle and demonstrated to him that there is no way in heck you're hearing a clip ping after being exposed to the report of a battle rifle. After years of arguing he simply said "I suppose you're right".

Along those lines for a time it seemed like every GW vet was on the receiving end of a SCUD. Kind of odd since somewhat less the 1% of American soliders came under attack by a SCUD.

I'm a vet so I can appreciate what all of these guys have gone through but come on, guys who never came within hundred miles of "Tiger" talk as if every time they engaged the Germans they came under attack by SS troops fielding tigers supported by hordes of '88s.

I believe that many Sherman tankers preferred the short 75mm. It was far easier to use in confined spaces & fired a good HE shell, good for dealing with dug in infantry & AT guns. As for what the "occidental" allies would have done if they faced what the "kitties" were afraid of, well 3000+ heavy bombers would have come in handy.

The report seems to indicate a 90 degree orthogonal attack. In other words, there is no obliquity to the shot angle. many here would be surprised what a side angle of 30 degrees would do to the results. The US tested M72 against the sides of the Tiger.